note: again, we have more strict guidelines for this poem. my professor wanted us to experiment with longer lines while incorporating the requirements in the exercise, which was difficult. we had to explore a close relative’s experience meeting a celebrity from an effaced third person perspective. it wasn’t easy and i’ve fiddled with this poem. not too happy with it, but it’s cute and about my mama, so i will share. try not to cringe too hard, please. also, i took some liberties, because it was allowed, lol. 🙂
My mother is parked outside Albertson’s, the same grocery store
where she’ll meet my father, her future husband nine years later.
It’s raining, heavily beating down on the roof of her shiny new Sunbird. Hoping
it’ll let up a bit before she needs to run in, she sits
in the driver’s seat.
Eyes shifting around the dark parking lot, keys between her fingers, she keeps
alert. Eyes a corner, the door. It’s dark and
my mother grabs a buggy, shucking raindrops off her twenty-one year old
body. Dark hair frames a face eerily similar to mine, but she holds her head
up high as she walks down aisles; confident.
My mother’s enormous bejeweled sunglasses block my view of her hazel eyes. Clothing
flatters her shape, curves pulling attention: red shorts and milky
white thighs. She embodies sass; her hips sway. Confidence in spades, she
pays no attention to what others say, unless of course it’s someone
relevant, you know? Either way, that’s what everyone thinks, at least, but
my mother struts through aisles in Albertsons, through heavy thunderstorm winds right into a man with nothing but plans. Not the one who’ll help make me,
no, but the John Travolta, from Grease. Strutting confidence gone, she scrambles for apologies, searches for her sunglasses
leaving them lying
broken on the tile
floor.
My mother’s hazel eyes gleam. She shakes his hand and he’s on his way again; groceries
forgotten. The clunky flip phone sitting in her pocket is unusually heavy, but
she grins; unwilling to wait.
Rain is only a drizzle as she leaves, shuffling to her shiny new Sunbird,
parked around that dark corner. Eyes shifting, she plops down in the driver’s seat,
shaking out her damp hair like a wet dog. She dials Vicky’s cell.
“You won’t believe what just happened,” she breathes, gripping
that clunky phone like a tether, squirming on the leather. Vibrating with
an excitement eerily similar to
my own.
Catching Courage 